The boy believed everything the master told him about the piano and the house of ill fame, but failed to be impressed by a single word regarding the woman. In fact, everything the old man said of her merely increased the cautious, ever-watchful feeling of mistrust with which Yevsey treated his master, and by coloring Rayisa Petrovna with a still deeper tinge of the unusual, made her seem even more beautiful in his eyes.
Another object of Yevsey's curiosity besides Rayisa was Anatol, apprentice to the glazier, Kuzin, a thin, flat-nosed boy with ragged hair, dirty, always jolly, and always steeped in the odor of oil. He had a high ringing voice, which Yevsey liked very much to hear when he shouted:
"Wi-i-ndow pa-anes."
He spoke to Yevsey first. Yevsey was sweeping the stairway when he suddenly heard from below the loud question:
"Say there, kid, what government are you from?"
"From this government," answered Yevsey.
"I am from the government of Kostrom. How old are you?"
"Thirteen."
"I am, too. Come along with me."
"Where to?"
"To the river to go in bathing."
"I have to stay in the shop."
"To-day is Sunday."
"That doesn't make any difference."
"Well, go to the devil."
The glazier boy disappeared. Yevsey was not offended by his oath.
Anatol was off the whole day carrying a box of glass about the city, and usually returned home just as the shop was being closed. Then almost the entire evening his indefatigable voice, his laughter, whistling, and singing would rise from the yard. Everybody scolded him, yet all loved to meddle with him and laugh at his pranks. Yevsey was surprised at the boldness with which the ragged, snub-nosed boy behaved toward the grown-up folk, and he experienced a sense of envy when he saw the gold-embroidery girl run about the yard in chase of the jolly, insolent fellow. He was powerfully drawn to the glazier boy, for whom he found a place in his vague fancies of a clean and quiet life.
Once, after supper, Yevsey asked the master:
"May I go down in the yard?"
The old man consented reluctantly.
"Go, but don't stay long. Be sure not to stay long."
Another time when Yevsey put the same request the master added:
"No good will come of your being in the yard."
Yevsey ran down the stairway quickly, and seated himself in the shade to observe Anatol. The yard was small and hemmed in on all sides by the high houses. The tenants, workingmen and women, and servants, sat resting on the rubbish heaps against the walls. In the center of the ring Anatol was giving a performance.
"The furrier Zvorykin going to church!" he shouted.
To his astonishment Yevsey saw the little stout furrier with hanging lower lip and eyes painfully screwed up. Thrusting out his abdomen and leaning his head to one side, Anatol struggled toward the gate in short steps, reluctance depicted in his walk. The people sitting around laughed and shouted approval.
"Zvorykin returning from the saloon!"
Now Anatol swayed through the yard, his feet dragging along feebly, his arms hanging limp, a dull look in his wide-open eyes, his mouth gaping hideously yet comically. He stopped, tapped himself on the chest, and said in a wheezy pitiful voice:
"God – how satisfied I am with everything and everybody! Lord, how good and pleasant everything is to Thy servant, Yakov Ivanich. But the glazier Kuzin is a blackguard – a scamp before God, a jackass before all the people – that's true, God – "
The audience roared, but Yevsey did not laugh. He was oppressed by a twofold feeling of astonishment and envy. The desire to see this boy frightened and wronged mingled with the expectation of new pranks. He felt vexed and unpleasant because the glazier boy did not show up men who inflicted hurt, but merely funny men. Yevsey sat there with mouth agape and a stupid expression on his face, his owlish eyes staring.
"Here goes glazier Kuzin!"
Before Yevsey appeared the gaunt red muzhik always half drunk, the sleeves of his dirty shirt tucked up, his right hand thrust in the breast of his apron, his left hand deliberately stroking his beard – Kuzin had a reddish forked beard. He was frowning and surly and moved slowly, like a heavy cart-load. Looking sidewise he screeched in a cracked, hoarse voice:
"You are carrying on again, you heretic? Am I to listen to this nonsense for long? You blasted, confounded – "
"Skinflint Raspopov!" announced Anatol.
The smooth, sharp little figure of Yevsey's master crept past him moving his feet noiselessly. He worked his nose as if smelling something, nodded his head quickly, and kept tugging at the tuft on his chin with his little hand. In this characterization something loathsome, pitiful, and laughable became quite apparent to Yevsey, whose vexation rose. He felt sure his master was not such as the young glazier represented him to be.
Next, Anatol took to mimicking members of the audience. Inexhaustible, stimulated by the applause, he tinkled until late at night like a little bell, evoking kindly, cheerful laughter. Sometimes the man who was touched would rush to catch him, and a noisy chase about the yard would ensue.
Yevsey sighed. Anatol noticed him, and pulled him by the hand into the middle of the yard, where he introduced him to the audience.
"Here he is – sugar and soap. Skinflint Raspopov's cousin morel."
Turning the boy's little figure in all directions, he poured forth a flowing stream of strange comic words about his master, about Rayisa Petrovna, and about Yevsey himself.
"Let me go!" Yevsey quietly demanded, trying to tear his hand from Anatol's strong grip, in the meantime listening attentively in the endeavor to understand the hints, the filth of which he felt. Whenever Yevsey struggled hard to tear himself away, the audience, usually the women, said lazily to Anatol:
"Let him go."
For some reason their intercession was disagreeable to Yevsey. It exasperated Anatol, too, who began to push and pinch his victim and challenge him to a fight. Some of the men urged the boys on.
"Well – fight! See which will do the other up."
The women objected:
"A fight! Thanks, we're not interested. Don't."
Yevsey again felt something unpleasant in these words.
Finally Anatol scornfully pushed Yevsey aside.
"Oh, you kid!"
The next morning Yevsey met Anatol outside the house carrying his box of glass, and suddenly, without desiring to do it, he said to him:
"Why do you make fun of me?"
The glazier boy looked at him.
"What of it?"
Yevsey was unable to reply.
"Do you want to fight?" asked Anatol again. "Come to our shed. I will wait for you until evening."
He spoke calmly and in a business-like way.
"No, I don't want to fight," replied Yevsey quietly.
"Then you needn't! I'd lick you anyway," said the glazier, and added with assurance, "I certainly would."
Yevsey sighed. He could not understand this boy, but he longed to understand him. So he asked a second time:
"I say, why do you make fun of me?"
Anatol apparently felt awkward. He winked his lively eyes, smiled, and suddenly shouted in anger:
"Go